In writing about Tough Liberal, Richard Kahlenberg’s biography of Albert Shanker, Slate’s Sara Mosle extols Shanker as the “greatest union organizer of the latter half of the 20th century.”

. . . Shanker transformed American education. His efforts significantly boosted teacher salaries, equalized pay between men and women, assured minimal standards in schools (not least by capping class sizes), and forced the National Educational Association, the nation’s most powerful teachers’ union, to embrace collective bargaining. He also encouraged his sometimes reluctant membership to embrace necessary reform; the American Federation of Teachers, under Shanker’s leadership until his death in 1997, backed provisions for ousting incompetent teachers, public school choice, and the standards movement.

I met Shanker once. He was an incredibly dynamic and fearless man.

Update: Cecilia Le has more on Education Sector.

What does “proficient” mean? State tests used to measure student achievement are creating “a false impression of success, especially in reading and in the early grades,” concludes a Fordham study on The Proficiency Illusion. Expectations are low in the early grades, setting students up for failure in higher grades.

Although there has not been a “race to the bottom,” with the majority of states dramatically lowering standards under pressure from NCLB, the report did find a “walk to the middle,” as some states with high standards saw their expectations drop toward the middle of the pack.

Math tests tend to be more demanding, and tests for both reading and math get much harder to pass in eighth grade.

States’ definitions of “proficiency” vary wildly. Colorado, Wisconsin and Michigan have the lowest NCLB proficiency standards in reading; those three plus Illinois have the lowest math standards. California, Massachusetts and South Carolina have the highest standards in reading and math; Maine also is high in reading, New Mexico in math.

To measure whether fourth graders can distinguish fact from opinion, Wisconsin children answer a question about cats and dogs; Massachusetts children evaluate a reading passage by Tolstoy.

More students are passing state tests largely because the tests are easier to pass, the study concludes.

In fact, the report notes that the primary factor explaining increases — including over half of the reported gains in reading and nearly 70 percent of the reported gains in math — is a decline in cut scores on state tests.

In a New York Times op-ed, Diane Ravitch suggests the feds and the state should switch roles:

We will never know how well or poorly our students are doing until we have a consistent national testing program in which officials have no vested interest in claiming victory.

. . . Washington should supply unbiased information about student academic performance to states and local districts. It should then be the responsibility of states and local districts to improve performance.

Ravitch also calls for dropping the “absurd goal” of universal proficiency by 2014. It’s not going to happen, unless proficiency is defined way, way, way down.

Fordham also wants to drop the universal proficiency goal in order to get states to get honest about what their students know. But will schools improve if there’s no goal?

Rory of Parentalcation has moved to Alaska and decided not to have his son tested for the gifted program at his new school. He thinks it’s a waste of time.

His experience last year in South Carolina was a waste of time. He colored more posters in his gifted class than he did in art class.

Only one Anchorage elementary school offers acceleration; the rest provide “enrichment opportunities that incorporates (sic) universal themes with classroom learning in alignment with the district’s standards and goals.” Rory sees enrichment as a way to make sure the smart kids don’t get too far ahead.

His son’s first assignment was to make a fire prevention poster.

A commenter suggests a “just say no” response to “crazy crayola projects.”

I put a post-it note on the assignment with a note that kindly says “I’m so sorry, but (child’s name) won’t be completing this project. Instead, he/she will (insert age-appropriate assignment here, like writing a short paragraph on fire prevention, for example). If you would like to discuss this issue, don’t hesitate to call me. Thanks!” Then I call other parents in the class and ask them to do the same thing.

Apparently, the Crayola curriculum is annoying a lot of parents.

This week’s Carnival of Education, hosted by Greg Laden of Evolution, features a post by Jo Scott-Coe of HorseSense and Nonsense on a California district’s no novels policy. Five years ago, non-honors English teachers were told to use only the readings in the textbook. Now the policy has been extended to honors English courses.

I’ve already heard that the “wiggle room” allowed by the district for Honors courses (to pacify instructors) will go something like this: Once you finish covering everything on the planning map, go ahead and use real literature; just make sure you teach the novels using materials provided by the Holt standardized curriculum . . . The same “compromise” was vetted five years ago for non-accelerated, non-Honors courses and guess what? There’s little real whole-book reading going on in those classes any more.

Riverside Unified’s theory is that teachers can’t use literature (or non-fiction books) to teach the standards.

Engineering education needs a radical redesign, concluded the F.W. Olin Foundation. So, the foundation put all their assets into creating the tuition-free Olin College of Engineering near Boston. From the New York Times Magazine:

Most engineering schools stress subjects like differential calculus and physics, and their graduates tend to end up narrowly focused and likely to fit the stereotype of a socially awkward clock-puncher. Richard K. Miller, the president of the school, likes to share a professional joke: “How can you tell an extroverted engineer? He’s the one who looks at your shoes when he talks to you.” Olin came into being, Miller told me last spring in his office on campus, to make engineers “comfortable as citizens and not just calculating machines.” Olin is stressing creativity, teamwork and entrepreneurship — and, in no small part, courage. “I don’t see how you can make a positive difference in the world,” he emphasized, “if you’re not motivated to take a tough stand and do the right thing.”

Olin, which opened in 2002, teaching engineering through project-based learning. There are no academic departments and no tenure for faculty. It contracts out humanities, business and life-science classes to nearby colleges. Forty percent of Olin students are female, which is quite high for an engineering school.

Alan Eustace, senior vice president of engineering and research at Google, wondered if the Olin program might produce precisely the kind of students Google is looking for. “I absolutely believe that teamwork and experiential learning and understanding problems and bringing multiple disciplines together to solve problems is fundamental to the way that engineers work” in the real world, he said. “The skills they are trying to develop are very meaningful in environments that we try to build.”

However, the president “is concerned that few of the class of 2006 are going on to graduate study in engineering or jobs in the field,” the Times reports. It doesn’t say what they are doing instead. Nor does it report that Google has hired any Olin grads.

Update: Several commenters say Google has hired Olin grads from the first two classes. (You’d think the Times reporter would have included that fact.)

“Cathy,” who has an engineering degree and an MBA, checked out Olin with her son. She wrote that the school is very small and can’t do everything: The focus is on mechanical and electrical engineering.

The emphasis in team work, project based learning, communications and entrepreneurship means that they are turning out “real” workers who can function in society. More to the point and shrewd calculation on their part, they are focusing on turning out (hopefully) successful entrepreneurs and tech company leaders. Many of their graduates are a natural fit for a tech company’s marketing department, for example. Good for future alum giving. They are also good for companies that “use” technology rather than “are” inventors of technology, which is why they are a good fit for the Googles of the world.

Olin doesn’t have the faculty or funding to get into interdisciplinary areas such as bioengineering or nanotechnology, she was told on campus.

Cathy thinks many Olin grads will end up in “the ancillary functions like marketing, program management, etc. in a tech company, or in tech-related functions in an industrial company. Unless, of course, they choose to go to grad school, knowing that they must make up some basic stuff that they may have missed at Olin.” Others will earn MBA or law degrees, she predicts.

Hand-held calculators are 40 years old, reports the Washington Post.

Educators are deadlocked over whether calculators are helping create a more numerate society capable of claiming the next technological breakthrough or making students technology-dependent and mathematically insecure.

The United States lags in international math exams. Top performers, including Singapore and China, put more emphasis on mental math and memorization and introduce calculators to the curriculum later than the United States does, said Tom Loveless, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, who has researched how calculators affect student achievement.

Calculator defenders say students can skip “repetitive, drill-based learning” in favor of “creativity and curiosity.”

“We can jump past the grunt work and get to more sophisticated levels of analysis,” said James M. Rubillo, executive director of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

Even NCTM, which recommends using calculators in kindergarten, now says students should learn “mental math” skills.

I once tutored a student who could calculate rapidly in his head but had trouble understanding math concepts. His response to any problem was to multiply every number in sight, because that he could do. I never came across a kid who could understand concepts but couldn’t add or multiply without a calculator. Are there such students?

Teachers strongly oppose linking pay to performance, concludes a survey of teachers in Washington state. Teachers were asked about higher pay based on working in a difficult school (“combat pay”), teaching in a high-demand subject area, student performance and National Board certification. From Teacher Quality Bulletin:

Combat pay ranks most favorably with teachers with support at 77 percent. In contrast, there is scant, almost nonexistent support for any pay plan that tries to assess a teacher’s performance: 14 percent of the teachers support performance pay “somewhat” with only 3 percent in “strong favor.”

. . . Support for merit pay is higher among teachers who have positive impressions of their principal and negative impressions of their colleagues.

Not surprisingly, math and science teachers strongly support subject area bonuses; teachers certified by the National Board support bonuses for certification.

Smaller class sizes were less important than higher pay.

A huge majority (82 percent) of the teachers said they’d rather get a $5,000 pay raise than teach two fewer students. Most would still take that raise (69 percent) over getting another prep period every week (69 percent). It could be that teachers would rather have the money, or it could also reflect the rampant distrust of teachers for districts following through on any promised improvements. When in doubt, take the cash; it’s a safer bet.

There’s more here on the “slender” evidence supporting the efficacy of performance pay.